Document: Berezovsky v Abramovich judgment in full

The full judgment from the $6.5bn legal battle between Roman Abramovich and
his business partner Boris Berezovsky.

11:13AM BST 31 Aug 2012

Mrs Justice Gloster said that because of the nature of the factual issues "the case was one where, in the ultimate analysis, the court had to decide whether to believe Mr Berezovsky or Mr Abramovich".

She said that because "both the Sibneft and the RusAl claims depended so very heavily on the oral evidence of Mr Berezovsky, the court needed to have a high degree of confidence in the quality of his evidence".

The judge added: "That meant confidence not only in his ability to recollect things accurately, but also in his objectivity and truthfulness as a witness."

She announced in a lengthy summary of her judgment: "On my analysis of the entirety of the evidence, I found Mr Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes.

"At times the evidence which he gave was deliberately dishonest; sometimes he was clearly making his evidence up as he went along in response to the perceived difficulty in answering the questions in a manner consistent with his case; at other times, I gained the impression that he was not necessarily being deliberately dishonest, but had deluded himself into believing his own version of events.

"On occasions he tried to avoid answering questions by making long and irrelevant speeches, or by professing to have forgotten facts which he had been happy to record in his pleadings or witness statements.

"He embroidered and supplemented statements in his witness statements, or directly contradicted them."